I have been writing for Forbes since 2005. Prior to that I covered the business beat for the New York Daily News. Because I've studied both finance and journalism, and because I like both numbers & analysis and sports, what's a more fun job than merging the two, writing about sports from the business side and from the stat geek/number crunching side? I have a BS in business from Boston College and a masters in business journalism from New York University.

As Trial Nears, Donald Sterling Fighting From Behind

That much-ballyhooed $2 billion sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to Steve Ballmer still isn’t a done deal.

NBA execs expressed confidence back in April that they had a strong case to force a sale by Donald Sterling based on recorded racist remarks he made to his girlfriend, remarks that allegedly violated a morals clause in the league’s by-laws. But the whole saga has taken a different course since then, away from action by the NBA and toward a battle between Sterling and his wife Shelly for control of the family trust that owns the Clippers.

Shelly managed to convince Donald to agree to an examination by a pair of doctors, whose findings claimed Donald to be mentally incapacitated, leaving Shelly in control to negotiate the sale to Ballmer. Donald, though, is challenging the findings – his lawyers claiming incomplete testing and exaggerated results.

If Donald succeeds in getting the ruling regarding his mental capacities tossed out, the whole affair would presumably revert back to the NBA moving to force him out based on a by-laws violation. It’s a move that some experts says would be legally challenging – applying a relatively vague clause to a piece of evidence gathered through an illegal tape recording isn’t going to happen without a fight.

The NBA would certainly like to avoid its own legal battle by sitting back and watching Shelly emerge victorious in her battle over the Sterling Family Trust. The latest twist, with a probate court trial set to begin on Monday, is a last-minute maneuver by Donald’s legal team to get the case moved to federal court, claiming that public disclosure of his medical records violate his privacy, rendering the probate court powerless to rule. Shelly and her lawyers have filed to block his requested move, denouncing it as little more than a delaying tactic.

Alan Cutrow, a Los Angeles attorney specializing in family estate and trust matters, believes that Donald faces an uphill climb. First, on the question of privacy rights, there’s always a possibility that among many trust documents Donald likely signed over the years, he could have waived them. Even if no such documents are found, “if there was a violation of privacy rights, that may spur only damages (to Donald), not an unwinding of the entire thing,” he says.

As for Donald’s attempts to have the two doctors’ findings of his competency rendered flawed or incomplete – also a tough sell. That’s because the competency standard for running major financial assets in a trust is generally far higher than the standard for making basic decisions. Sterling need not be declared strongly incapacitated to lose his challenge. “They haven’t said the guy is a basket case, they’ve said he has some level of diminished capacity,” says Cutrow, i.e. enough to forfeit decision-making power over a $2 billion asset.

That standard would mean that a proactive move by Sterling to secure additional opinions by different doctors would have to yield a finding of virtually no diminished capacity at all to give him a fighting chance. Is it possible? Sure. But he’s fighting from behind.

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